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• We know that in Congo’s many wars since 1996, at least 5.4 million civilians have been killed. • Of those people, at least 2.5 million have been children under the age of five. • Many of these children have died from violence directly. • But even those who have not been caught directly in the crossfire are destroyed by the disease and starvation that is a direct result of constant conflict and insecurity. • People will tell you that Congo’s life expectancy is 48, and that’s true – but what you don’t find out until later on, until you begin questioning that number because in Congo you see plenty of elderly people, is that the life expectancy is skewed so young because so many children die so early in their lives. • The infant mortality rate in Congo is the second worst in all the world – 75 of every 1000 children will die before the age of 1. (It’s 6:1000 in the USA, and we have one of the worst rates in the developed world) • One in every 7 children will die before the age of 5. • One of the most horrific aspects of Congo’s conflict, however, has been the rampant and forcible recruitment of both boys and girls as child soldiers 2
• At the height of the wars, it was estimated that Congo had at least 39,000 child soldiers within the ranks of its dozens of armed groups. • Fully 40% of those children were girls, used not only in combat but as “wives” and sex slaves for the other soldiers. • Children join the armed groups in one of two ways: 1. Voluntarily: this happens especially with boys, but not exclusively with boys. Children will join armed groups voluntarily or at the behest of a family member. Voluntary conscription usually coincides with the complete lack of any other educational or economic opportunity for the child and family. This is one of the reasons JWW focuses so deeply on education programs in Congo – we see educational opportunity as a crucial child protection mechanism. 2. Forcibly: It may seem illogical for armed groups to forcibly recruit children. Why not just use adults, who would likely be more capable or reliable soldiers? Several studies have researched the issue and have found a few common denominators: • Children are relatively easy to abduct, subjugate, and manipulate. They are more impressionable and vulnerable to indoctrination, and their moral development is incomplete and malleable. • They are also seen as more loyal and less threatening to adult leadership. • Even when children are less reliable in combat, they have particular functional values to the armed groups. They are well suited for logistical support of armed groups (cooking, acting as porters, etc). • At the end of the day, many rebel groups also make simple cost-benefit analysis: children require less food and no payment. Punishment of children is also less costly. Child soldiers are financially attractive. Rebel groups may be extremely resource-constrained and forced to recruit children. • Patterns of recruitment of children vary according to the context. It’s usually a mix of punishment, promises of rewards and indoctrination. • Many children are forced to participate in an assassination (perhaps of one of their relatives, parents or friends) – the goal here is to break their will, and convince them that there is no home they could return to that would ever accept them. Killing a relative in particular destroys a child’s outside options: if the child were to flee, he or she would have no place to go. • Armed forces also abuse certain motivations of children: children may join armed forces because of the desire to take control of events, or because of the protection offered by being at the shooting end of a gun. 3
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A caveat about these statistics: Data is hard to gather in Congo, persistent insecurity and constant population movement means researchers rarely have access to consistently, methodologically sound data. These estimates are just that – estimates – gathered from organizations like the UN, War Child and other expert organizations. The good news is that the use of child soldiers in Congo is on the decline, as you can see. The biggest reason for this is a fundamental shift made by the Congolese national army, the FARDC. Working with JWW’s partner BVES and a coalition of child - protection organizations it brought together in Congo, the Congolese government and army in the last few years has made it clear to its forces that the recruitment of child soldiers is no longer acceptable, and has demobilized all children previously serving in its ranks. In the gaps between years, moreover, we see these numbers waxing and waning – increasing when there is a surge of violence, and plateauing or even decreasing when security improves. Between January 2012 and August 2013, for example, which was the height of Congo’s M23 rebellion (likely sponsored by Rwanda), the UN confirmed at least 1000 new cases of child recruitment. 4
• As Laurent Kabila’s forces moved westward through then -Zaire to topple Mobutu in Kinshasa in 1996, they left a trail of horrific atrocities in their wake. • At that time, Esther was only 13 years old. Her village destroyed, she fled to a nearby village called Kabare and hid in a school. • She kept telling us – she was alone, all alone. • She had no idea where her mother or any of her siblings were. • Life was incredibly difficult for her, she said. One night, she was hiding in one of the buildings when soldiers began looting the area. • She hid behind something, but the soldiers suspected there might be people hiding and they found her. • Six of the men, she said, “did very bad things against” her. Then, they just left her there. • Another girl found her lying there, and she and her father took her to their home to try to treat her. But she was “destroyed,” she said. A reminder – this was when she was 13 years old. • Esther says she felt completely alone, completely used. She had no where to go, and she didn’t know if she would even be accepted if she was able to find her family. • She purposefully went to a place where she knew there were Congolese army soldiers (FARDC) so that she could join the army. She told us that at the time, she felt that since she had been raped by the Rwandan soldiers, she needed to fight against them. She told us that she thought “having a gun would give her strength and value.” • She joined the army, and eventually one of the soldiers married her. She had two children with him. But soon after the birth of their second child, he was deployed far afield, and she was alone again. • She told us she felt discarded. She wanted to leave, to escape, but it was incredibly difficult to do so. She left once, was stolen back into the armed group again, and then managed to escape a second time. But she was alone with her children, had little way of earning a living and was living an incredibly poor and difficult life. • A few years later, she learned about one of the programs JWW is funding, LAV (Laissez L’Afrique Vivre, Let Africa Live). I’ll get into the program in a minute, but the crucial part about the program for Esther is this: it is the beginning of her being ok, of her not being alone. • On our first trip to Congo in 2009, what we heard over and over again from every survivor was this: I’m alone, I’m alone, I’m all alone. There was no hope, there was no expectation that even we, who had traveled thousands of miles to meet with them, could ever end or alleviate their total isolation. The hopelessness on that first trip was palpable, sometimes oppressive. • We heard it on this trip too – as I said to you, Esther kept telling us “I was alone, I was alone, I was alone.” But as we asked her about her time at LAV, where she’s training to work in the hospitality sector (hotels, restaurants and such), her affect changed. For the first time in her recounting of her story she was remotely animated – she looked up, she said “I was alone BUT NOW.” But now she has people. But now she found her mother, and when she’s done with her training she’ll go back to her family. But now she’s building a support network. But now she might have a chance at a real job, without needing a gun to provide for her. • Esther is far from recovered – you can see it in her stance in this picture, and we could see it 5
speaking with her. But as hard as her recovery is, for the first time she has a real shot at it, and she knows it. Even that change is a miracle to see. 5
JWW sees the need for critical responses on several levels. First, we must work to demobilize child soldiers from the armed groups themselves – to set them free from the clutches of the armed groups. Our best partner on this front is BVES, an organization that quite literally rescues children. This man, Dr. Murhabazi Namegabe, is a hero of ours in Congo. He is the only person we know of – and the only person anyone else we’ve spoken with in or out of Congo knows of – who goes into the field, negotiates with the armed groups for the release of the children, and then brings them back to Bukavu to the transit centers he operates. He is the only civilian that MONUSCO, the peacekeeping force in Congo, allows to come with them to surrender or demobilization points when an armed group surrenders or when members of an armed group defect. He also goes out on his own, to areas he knows are controlled by various armed groups, and negotiates for the children’s release. 6
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